American Civil Liberties Union

Though you wouldn’t know it from the state's recent activities, the Constitution does apply to Mississippi.

This week, we filed a lawsuit against Mississippi for promoting religious messages in a state-sponsored and state-funded abstinence-only-until-marriage event.  Each May, the Mississippi Department of Human Services hosts several abstinence-only events, including a big summit held at the Jackson Coliseum.  The summit includes various speakers and performers, and thousands of teens and community members attend.  For the past two years, the event has included significant religious proselytizing – a blatant violation of the Constitution’s protections that require the government to neither promote nor prohibit religious activities.  After learning that the May 2008 event featured religious content, we sent a letter to the state asking for its assurance that the May 2009 event would be secular.  Not only did we not get a response, but the constitutional violations at the May 2009 event were even more egregious.

Recently I had a "Really?!?" moment, just like Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers from Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) — the nonpartisan investigative wing of Congress — issued a report (PDF) uncovering Health and Human Services' (HHS's) mismanagement of a $150 million-a-year grant program called Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood Initiative. This program was created by Congress in 2005 as part of the Deficit Reduction Act to support marriage and fatherhood promotion programs. The goal of this program is to reduce out-of-wedlock pregnancies and encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent households.

In administering the grant, HHS determined that these funds could not be used to fund abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, which are already funded at more than $170 million each year through other funding streams. Why, then, did HHS award or renew grants under the Healthy Marriage Program to organizations that explicitly asked for funds to provide abstinence-only programming?

Before the release of the GAO report, the ACLU had sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to HHS to learn the details of the Healthy Marriage Grant awards because we were concerned about whether the money was being used for proper purposes. But we didn't know that HHS deemed abstinence-only programming an impermissible activity with these funds.

A new year is exciting because it provides an opportunity for reflection and holds the possibility of change and a fresh start for the coming year. We are at this exciting crossroads with many important civil liberties issues, and sexuality education is one of them. A recent study released in Pediatrics provides yet another opportunity to reflect on the abysmal failure of federally funded abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. The study looks specifically at virginity pledges, which are often a part of federally funded abstinence-only programs. These pledges are just what they sound like: teens pledge to refrain from sexual activity until marriage. Guess what? These pledges don't work, and can actually lead teens to make bad decisions.

Each year, thousands of young people come to the United States without their families; they are fleeing war, violence, and abuse, including sexual abuse. Some have been trafficked for labor or prostitution, and some have been sexually assaulted during their journey here. Once they make it to our shores, they need our compassion and care. It is our government's legal and moral obligation to care for them by providing shelter, food, and medical treatment. But when it comes to reproductive health services, such as abortion and contraceptives, our government is putting up roadblocks rather than helping these teens.